Suddenly a terrific shaking of the earth took place; the foundations of the world seemed loosened, the people were thrown from their beds; the towers of the churches fell; the walls and roofs of the houses crashed in; the most dreadful panic reigned as thousands of persons were smothered in living tombs. It was an earthquake.
The shock lasted three minutes, during which the earth was wrenched and torn as if by a giant. In the time it takes to tell the city was destroyed, and the work of over two hundred years brought to ruin. Of a city with 60,000 souls, not more than twenty-five houses remained. Of the two great towers of the cathedral, one fell upon the domed roof and the other on the belfry, destroying the temple in great part—so chronicled a Jesuit priest who witnessed it. Five magnificent churches were laid in ruins, with sixty convents, chapels and monasteries. The great buildings fell upon the small—all were demolished. The streets were blocked with wreckage: the inhabitants, in all states of dress and undress, striving to flee, were crushed by falling walls. Sweet maidens of Lima, old hags from the back streets, noble and priest, gallant and beggar, all in their terror jostled each other. Those engaged in illicit amours confessed their sins to unheeding ears. The viceroy's palace fell; the triumphal arch with the equestrian statue of Philip V fell; the Royal University and colleges fell; the Tribunal of the Inquisition was reduced to fragments.
In Lima at this time Catholicism was in the zenith of its power and splendour and the faith of the people strongest. But no one dare approach the churches, notwithstanding that they were the home of God. The shocks continued—more than two hundred in twenty-four hours—and went on for three days. Trenches were opened to bury the dead. The stench of the dead bodies of mules smothered in their stables was unbearable. Over six thousand persons perished.
Whilst the stricken people were seeking their lost relatives, another terror was visited upon them. Suddenly, from Callao appeared a negro on horseback, his eyes starting from their sockets, shouting in accents of terror: "Save yourselves! the sea is coming sweeping in over the coast! It will be upon you!"
Lima is but a few miles from Callao, with a strip of coastal land between. The earthquake had given rise, as it commonly does on that coast, to a tidal-wave, which was now rushing inland. It did not, however, reach Lima, falling some distance short, and, it is said, rising to 150 feet above sea-level. But the people already seemed to see themselves overwhelmed. A priest, half naked, wounding his own breast in penitential frenzy, rushed through the streets, ashes on his head, the bit and bridle of a mule in his mouth. "This is the punishment of heaven upon sinners!" he cried, and he beat himself with an iron bar until the blood gushed from his body. At the sight, thousands of persons fell on their knees, imploring pardon from heaven, confessing their crimes, but "as all were sinners, none lent ear to the confession of others, being too much occupied in recounting their own misdeeds."
In Callao a more dreadful scene was enacted. After the first great shock of the earthquake, the people tried to flee from the town, but the gates had been locked for the night, and whilst they flocked the streets, screaming and praying, endeavouring to avoid the falling walls, a terrible thing was seen. The sea had gone out for more than two miles from the shore, forming mountains of water that seemed to reach the skies. The mountains of water then rushed forward and fell with horrid crash upon the doomed city, submerging the ships in the bay or carrying them in among the houses. The cries for mercy to heaven were vain: there was no mercy shown them, and the people perished. When at length the waters retired, nothing was left of Callao but part of the wall and the two great doors of the city.[14]
To this day the image of Nuestra Señora de los Temblores—Our Lady of the Earthquakes—is carried through the streets of Lima, as of other Peruvian towns, such as Arequipa, which has suffered terribly from earthquakes in its history, whenever the earth trembles, that the heavens may be appeased.
A moral effect of these visitations is to be noted by the traveller in Peru. It is seen that the women of the labouring class wear very long skirts that often drag in the mud or dust. It was ordained that, the formerly short skirts being immodest and displeasing to heaven, which, it was held, had punished the people by that earthquake, they should henceforth be worn long enough to conceal the ankles!